Angry Buddha, Apologetic Buddha

I have made it to Phuket successfully! Every part of course was an adventure.

My arrival to Phuket came a couple hours late. The boards in the Bangkok airport didn't bother to tell anyone the plane was late and of course the staff doesn't want to stand there and wait for a late plane so they are hiding from the inquiring passengers. For a long time the flight didn't even get a gate assignment. There is something quite unnerving about being in a foreign airport, knowing your boarding time is 15:55 and staring at a board that has a blank spot under the gate column at 15:50. Eventually I tracked down an Asia Air person and got them to look it up in the system. She told me to go to B2 but failed to mention the flight wouldn't start boarding until 17:30.

The only highlight of my flight was one of the most beautiful above cloud sunsets I have ever seen. The light filtered though many layers of clouds and caused sunrays, orange, red, deep blue, and purple colored dramatic excellence. (no picture sorry)

Upon landing I was treated with a 1.5 hour minibus ride that was supposed to be 20 minutes. Long story short they had no idea which town my hotel was in and we took an island tour.

Wednesday morning I was awakened by jetlag at 05:00 and a power outage and decided to take a walk. I found the local fish market and grocery place where all the locals buy and sell everything. I found a cheap breakfast and was happy.

After walking and realizing everything was closed this early I decided to see sites instead of stores. I found a taxi driver that would drive me from site to site and would wait at each place while I took pictures. Eventually we found a 30 meter tall sitting Buddha statue. I climbed the temple to take pictures, removed my sandals as required, but still managed to make Buddha angry.

On the way back down the stairs, I realized the steps seemed very slippery as it was raining. I reached for the handrail and before I could get to it, my feet were already in front of me and I was headed down the stairs—all the way down the stairs. I’m not sure how many obscenities I uttered but when I got to the bottom and just laid there trying to figure out how many bones I broke, a kind Buddhist Monk came out of nowhere and said, “Walk slowly, walk slowly, must walk slowly.” He may have been trying to tell me to get up slowly but either way I found it hilarious that I just swore all the way down a Buddhist temple.

I gashed my arm pretty good and had additional scrapes on my ankles, and other arm. My tailbone took quite a beating too. The taxi driver ended up taking me to the clinic for some gauze and to get cleaned up. I paid a whopping 100 Baht for the service and medical supplies. I asked for extra gauze so I could keep changing the dressing and she handed tons over with a brand new roll of medical tape. That’s 3 bucks US in case you are wondering! Pretty good considering she worked the wound for 10 minutes.

Off I went to Patong Beach. This is the super touristy beach of Phuket Island. The beach was nice but quite exposed to the direct winds from the West. This location got hit hard by the 2004 Tsunami but you couldn’t tell from the looks of it.

My next adventure might seem naïve to some of you but I enjoyed it and don’t regret it. I was approached by 2 Brits about a free prize based on some scratch tickets. I scratched and won a t-shirt on the first card, and the grand prize on the second. The grand prize ended up being a 1 week vacation in a nice resort in either Phuket, Ko Samui, Pattaya, Spain, or China. While I was quite skeptical, the Brits’ reactions made me feel it wasn’t as much of a scam. They were both super surprised I had scratched the Grand Prize and told me that most people only win t-shirts, free drinks, dinners out at a local cabaret, and occasionally a free night at a local resort.

So to collect my prize I had to sit through a 90 minute timeshare presentation. It ended up being pretty cool although much longer than 90 minutes (the guy was new and slow at his job). They drove us to 3 different resorts in the system and at each place he offered me a drink to relax while we were waiting for the next transport. When all was said and done I had 4 non-alcoholic mixed fruit shakes and a full lunch, all at beachside spots and resorts. While it hadn’t been my original plan for the day, it was a pretty great alternative considering my tailbone and arm were throbbing. I guess Buddha was apologizing for his harsh treatment earlier in the day.

Later in the evening, I caught up with Ryan and Alexia. (for those of you that don’t know, Ryan and Alexia are close friends that paved the way for me to be here. They did all the research ahead of time, made all the mistakes for me, and now I get to steal of the fruits of their labor). They were arriving from a Kuala Lumpur visa run and I was waiting in Phuket an extra day to travel with them to Ko Phi Phi Don the following morning. After a long morning of last minute shopping, we boarded a 1:30 ferry and by 3:30 we rolled into my new home.

Ko Phi Phi Don is a beautiful island with amazing limestone cliffs and blue crescent sandy beaches. I will be posting many pictures later. With only less than 2 days here I am already extremely happy with my choice of islands. The food has already been a treat and super cheap cheap.

Tomorrow I will be pounding through my Diver Master exams so I can finish up my DM soon. It’s good to do it now while I’m banned from the water with a gash in my arm.